If there's one rule about work I've come to know well, it's this: if your boss is waiting to see you when you walk into work, it's probably not good news.
In fairness, I actually like Scott. He's the kind of boss who gets that his staff aren't a bunch of identical pegs, all of whom'll fit into any role. Instead, he's been trying to treat us bar staff like normal people, finding out what roles we prefer, whether it's serving, clearing up or general gophering. Of course, that didn't mean we'd actually be doing those jobs come opening night, but hey, it was a lot more than my previous bosses. Out of the three owners, he was definitely my favourite. Still, it didn't make me any more comfortable to find him waiting for me when I walked into Singularity.
Most bars I've worked in have you coming in via a back entrance of some kind, whether it's to keep the customers from realizing that you're more than drinks delivery system or because they don't want people to try and get in early, but we were actually encouraged to use the front door. I suspect that it's because they're really proud of the art design of the place. I couldn't really argue with that reaction, as I was amazed by it.
The main double doors led into a boxy, airlock-like antechamber with the coat-check and entry till filling most of it. Unlike most bars, which treated this space like an unwelcome extrusion, Singularity had done it up to look like a swirling portal, the doors into the club proper done up with wide swirls of burnished steel that extended out to the walls around them. The other walls were a matt black, so that the eye was drawn inexorably towards the gateway ahead. There was a similar design (if harder wearing) outside, making sure that everyone looked twice at the relatively unassuming building that housed us.
Scott was leaning against the counter in the 'air-lock' when I walked, which, as well as displaying his long, delightful length of man-flesh in glorious fashion, made it almost impossible to get into Singularity without literally climbing over him (not that I wouldn't have minded doing that one day. What can I say? He's tasty in every way that counts). I didn't bother trying as he instantly unfolded from the slump when he saw me come in, straightening up with an easy smile.
"Ah, Lea," My full name's Leannesidhe, but you can guess exactly how often I use that. "Can I have a word before you get started?" It wasn't like I could really say no.
"Sure, what's up?" I couldn't help, but match his smile. He was the kind of person you just wanted to be around, he seemed to make you smile just by existing. It made complaining about things just a little difficult, when all you really wanted to do was make your boss smile.
"I just need a little advice," he said with a smile and I nodded. They'd headhunted me because the three owner/ managers hadn't run a bar before and I've spent the last two years working in almost every bar in two cities. I'd spent quite a while showing them a few of the tricks I'd picked up, all those ones that don't occur to anyone to write down, because they seem so obvious. It did help when someone knew the proper gas mixes for the different beers. Or even that there was such a thing. "It's in my office. Shouldn't take more than a minute."
"After you then." No, I didn't get him to go ahead of me because I wanted to watch his tight little butt. No, not at all.
Scott led me into Singularity's main hall, as his office lay on the other side, which I definitely didn't mind, as it made the entrance's spectacle look simple. The walls were matt black again, so monotone that even with the house lights up it was near impossible to see the exact join between wall and floor. To save from the inevitable damage this would cause, there were blue LED strips running along the walls at waist height, looking for all the world like the glowing blue lines from Tron. Of course, they weren't the real attraction. No, the real thing that caught the eye was the hundreds of tiny white LEDs inset into the walls, floor and ceiling. With the lights down, it was like you were standing in the midst of the galaxy, an effect made all the better by the swirls of slightly luminous paint the decorators had made nebulas from. I couldn't wait to see this place in full occupancy.
Not unsurprisingly, the bar was the only real break in the illusion, for obvious reasons. Still, the decorators had done their best. The lighting was mostly directed at surfaces out of sight of the customers, either up at the recessed ceiling or down at our low work surfaces. One unfortunate side-effect was that you always had light in you eyes, but, hey, who ever said work was supposed to be pleasant? However, behind the bar was our objective, a door into the club's back passages.
It doesn't really occur to you until you work in one, but half of a bar or club's work is done out of sight of the customers. There's always a whole network of passages behind the walls, leading to the storerooms, cellars and break rooms that power the place. If you've ever wondered where all the staff go during the night, they're probably in the passages finding more drinks. Or hiding from their customers, of course.
Scott led me into the passageway behind the main bar, answering my questions about the upcoming shifts. The only one he was really focusing on was Monday evening's opening, because it was make or break for the club. Somehow, Scott and his colleagues had managed to get the contract to be the official venue for the freshers' first night in Leicester. Don't ask me how. I've no idea. If I had to guess, I'd say that they paid one monster of a bribe. Not that I'm complaining, as they're paying me a major bonus for the shift.
The back passages were far cheaper maintained than the club proper, little more than cheap, battered plaster that had been painted white a long time ago. They were also tight, with only enough space for us to walk in single-file (Yay, more butt watching!). As we walked, the conversation seemed to dry up, until we were walking in a silence, punctuated solely by the sound of our shoes striking the plastic floor.
As we walked, something struck me as odd. I seemed to be the only person in. I'd been told that this shift was one last training session, one extra just to calm the owner/ managers' nerves about Monday night, but no one else seemed to have turned up yet. It was all a bit weird.
"Ah! Here we are!" Scott said with a flashed grin. His office was a hole in the wall, a little box with half the ceiling filled by the cellar next door's refrigerator, a desk filling most of the floor space. With the door open, there was just enough space for two chairs, one of which Scott immediately took, gesturing silently for me to take the other. I quickly sat down, knowing full well how rare a sit down was while working behind a bar.
"So what's up?" I asked and he grinned boyishly at me. He took a plastic bottle from the desk and shook it at me. I could easily see a red drink sloshing around inside it, filling up maybe half of it.
"We're thinking of doing a one-off cocktail to celebrate the opening and I was hoping, as our most experienced barperson, you might give me your opinion of it." He spun off the cap with an easy movement and handed it to me before I could even respond. Taking it, I held it up to my eye and examined it. For the briefest moment I wondered if it was spiked. Don't ask me why.
"What's in it?"
"That would take all the fun out of it." I had to grin at his amused tone. I raised the bottle to my lips and waited for the liquid to to roll down into my mouth. As I did so, I glanced over to Scott.
Have you ever looked at someone and known exactly what they're thinking? Right down to the words. Well I did, right then. I looked at Scott and I knew exactly what he was thinking.
He watched with an avid expression as the drink slid towards my throat and an ugly light gleamed in his eyes. There was a predatory hunger there, just waiting for me to drink. I stopped. There was no way I was going to drink something when a guy wanted me to do so much. The only reason to look like that was if he'd spiked it.
I lowered the bottle and a flicker of rage flashed across his face as I tried to find something to say. I didn't get the chance.
The office was lit by a single bulb hanging from the ceiling, in yet another display of cheapness. As I searched for the right words, the bulb died. We didn't disappear into instant darkness, thanks to the ambient light from the hallway, but the shadows did leap up, dropping us into a haunted house gloom that made me jump. I glanced up at the bulb in surprise, expecting to see that it had finally gone. It hadn't.
The filament was just visible, burning with a sullen orange, but it was eclipsed by a single line of burning laser light that connected the bulb to the wall behind Scott. As I watched, it slashed down, searing into the brickwork to release a thin stream of grey smoke that drifted up to the ceiling. In the brief moment it took me to realise this was real, not some momentary hallucination, it had cut a rough doorway out of the wall, but it didn't end there.
The bulb burst back to full power as two tendrils of golden light wormed through the slashed opening and pulled the man-sized chunk of brickwork back as though it was a block of hollow foam. The birckwork crashed to the ground as the twilight flooded in, the orange street lights casting the office in hellish orange, as though the fires of hell had just risen up around us.
A man strode into the office, his appearance hidden by shadow. As Scott turned towards him in surprise, the man made an almost casual gesture and shackles of brilliant golden light picked him up and slammed him into the wall above his desk. Scott cried out in pain only to be cut off as another shackle wrapped itself across his mouth.
"Leannesidhe Mitchell?" The man asked with a calm rumble, looking down at me. He consulted a small piece of paper in his hand. "Second year student, part time barstaff? That you?"
"Umm," I shrank back as he took another step towards me. Now that he was in the light, he wasn't too bad to look at. Square jaw, blue eyes and spiked black hair defined a darkly handsome face. The dark theme continued down to a black jacket over a black shirt and black jeans, all stretched by some very nice muscles. If he hadn't just torn open the back wall and pinned my boss to the wall, I'd probably be dribbling over him. As it was, I just wanted to run away. "Ah, who wants to know?"
"I'll take that as a yes," he said in amusement. Before I could even think of standing, more light shackles wrapped themselves around me, binding my limbs in an instant. They were surprisingly cool, the heat of an over-full hot water bottle, not the fiery burning I was expecting. That didn't improve my opinion of them though. As I thrashed against them, doing little more than knocking myself off my chair, he reached down and grabbed hold of the band around my waist.
"For what it's worth," he said as he slung me over his shoulder, "I'm sorry about this."
++++
The stranger carried me through town as though I was little more than a rug slung over his shoulder. I tried to struggle, but his bonds were as strong as steel. All I managed to do was kick him a few times, but he didn't seem to really notice. With the direct approach out of action, I tried to appeal for help from the other people on the street.
The streets of Leicester are never really quiet, regardless of the hour. At this time, only an hour or so after dusk, they were positively teeming with people, either going home from work or heading on to a night out. There should have been loads of help, but none of them seemed to notice. As we passed them, it was as if they couldn't see us. I tried everything I could think of, thrashing about and trying to scream for help, but no one seemed to notice. They seemed to be looking roight through me, as though I wasn't there.
In retrospect, that's when I snapped. The laser, the impossible shackles and finally the people looking right through me were totally impossible. A few minutes ago, my biggest concern was just getting through the shift. Now I was being kidnapped by some handsome guy who could make shackles out of nothing but light. It was insane. This couldn't be real.
But it was.
Cold fire roared through my head and I screamed through my gag as agony ripped my body away from my control. I bucked and spasmed in my kidnapper's arms as I flailed around, trying to make the pain go away. It felt like someone was burrowing into my brain with a red-hot drill, boring away my identity as they went. My heart thundered in my ears as tears burnt their way from my eyes, horror filling my throat with bile. I wanted to hurl, vomit up all this confusion and insanity until the world was sane again, but I couldn't. I'd drown myself, gagged as I was.
Wildly, I looked round, hoping to see someone who could help me. There wasn't anyone, but what I did see made everything else slip away. Darkness shrouded the city around us, not simply the absence of light, but rather literal shadow, black streamers and tendrils that wrapped themselves around the buildings like the tentacles of an over-possessive squid. Like a squid's these tendrils moved, almost caressing the buildings and the people who walked past me. Other things moved in the shadow, formless figures that leapt onto the passers-by and reached up to whisper in their ears with long tongues of darkness. It was weird beyond belief.
I stared at the alien vista overlaid on the place I called home and all the pain and shock was washed away as I tried to understand what I was seeing. At first, it was easy to conclude that I must have gone insane, but the more I looked the more I was convinced it was real. It was somehow familiar, as though I already knew about it, but had merely forgotten about, but how was that even possible?
The more I looked, the more convinced I was that I'd seen all of it before, somewhere, sometime. I recognised this weirdness on some primal, unconscious level and I understood it, grasped it without understanding why. The shadowy tendrils and their little spawn weren't made of pure darkness, but of all kinds. It's hard to explain. I looked at them and saw a thick, matt black that devoured the light, but there was also a context there, shades of the darkness that I don't have the words to describe. It was colour and scent, tone and flavour, name and feeling all wrapped up into one.
Take the shop we were walking past right now. It was an adult shop, with stencilled lettering over blacked out windows, but the shadows that clung to it told a different story. They looked like the lecherous smile of an old man, felt like the caress of a lover and tasted of things better forgotten. Little things, tiny figures in the shape of old hungers and lost dreams, crawled across its walls, slipping through minuscule gaps to feed on the lusts that emanated from within the shop.
I understood all of that from one quick glance. It was as easy as reading the sign above the windows, but far more informative. Every other shop was the same, the shadows that wrapped it telling stories of dreams and nightmares that filled them to the brim. What was this? Why did I know this? It didn't make any sense.
I was still trying to make sense of everything I was seeing when the pain in my head, forgotten by the mad sights I was seeing, flared back into life. Brightness flashed behind my eyes and I screamed as the shock blasted me from reality and into unconsciousness.
++++
"Wait, so just to clarify," the voice was light and feminine, tempered by a rough humour. "Firstly, you ripped a hole in a club run by a trio of Masters, Forcing their staff member without anything like consent or fair warning, and then you kidnap her, Tuning her up in the process so that she's fully exposed before she can get any form of balance. Marcus, are you trying to get Consensus to put a bounty on you?"
"Well yeah, but I'm catching a bus in a few minutes, so I'll be out of town before anyone tries to grab me." The second speaker was my kidnapper, his voice amused. "Still, it was your boss' orders so you should talk to him about it all."
"Don't worry Molly." This third voice was calmer and colder, without the undercurrent of humour that the other two had had. "I asked him to do this. I'll take responsibility."
"Well, I don't know about you, but I'm not encouraged by that one bit," 'Marcus' said dryly. "Still, I have places to be, things run screaming from, so I'll see you round." There was the sound of a door closing.
"Well he's going to be gone for a while," The third voice said calmly. "Now that he has done, I think it might be a good idea for you to open your eyes now."
Nuts. I'd been hoping they might have left me alone for a moment, long enough for me to escape. I'd woken up a few seconds earlier, but I'd somehow managed to keep quiet. I'd taken one quick look at my surroundings and everything had come back. After all, it wasn't every day you woke up in a small office with peeling yellow walls and towering bookshelves on every wall. I'd clamped my eyes shut, but I'd obviously been trying to hard.
"If it helps, he's actually a lot nicer than you'd think from looking at him," The first speaker said lightly, her voice amused. The sofa I was lying on flexed as someone sat on in, making me wobble in place and a someone slapped me on the butt familiarly. "Won't you at least sit up and let us explain what's going on? I promise, no threats."
There wasn't any real choice, so I pushed my self up and opened my eyes. Looking at the office from a normal angle, it was even easier to see just how small the room was. Two desks lined each wall, with only enough space around them for someone to shuffle past the ever-present bookcases. The sofa sat at the end of the room, facing a door with a solid lock and a silly sigh entitled 'Da Boss' on it. Those shadows I'd been seeing before I fainted lined the well lit room, wreathing the ornate light-fixing without blocking the light in any way. They were weird, almost artificial in some way, but they suggested peace and tranquillity, a place that was safe. If I knew that I could trust them, I might have done so, but I doubted it. Besides, I wasn't about to trust a hallucination, no matter how much I thought I should.
I wasn't about to trust the three people around me either, no matter how pretty they were. The girl next to me was, in a word, beautiful. She also knew it. She had a flawless, patrician's face, more reminiscent of a statue than any living woman, framed by a glorious mess of blonde hair that tumbled down past her shoulders. Some hidden, catty part of me immediately began to wonder just how much she'd paid for her plastic surgery, as there was no way she could have been born this beautiful. The irritation continued as I took in the rest of her, which was very prominently displayed in a set of white clamdiggers and a top I wouldn't have dared wear. She, however, had the boobs (job) to make it look good. No, I wasn't annoyed at how much better she looked than me. She had to be the woman that'd slapped me on the ass.
In front of me stood a skinny, lanky man I immediately pegged as the third speaker. He wore an expensive suit, cut to fit his extremely thin frame. It actually looked pretty good on him, if you liked your men this stick-like. He had straight black hair, split neatly down the middle in an old-fashioned central parting and his face was an inexpressive mask of sharp planes and brilliant green eyes. He studied me with a kind of dispassionate curiosity that made me feel like a fascinating museum display. It made me feel like I needed a shower just from having him look at me. He smiled in an attempt to be reassuring, but it didn't really work, as the smile didn't reach his eyes, which were still cool and calculating.
"Ah so you are awake," said Mrs blonde and high-maintenance (Dear God, when did I turn into my high-school nemesis?) as soon as I'd opened my eyes. "Great!" She actually bounced up and down on the sofa, I kid you not. "Welcome to the Agency! Feel free to ask any questions you have!"
"Okay." I glanced between her and the skinny guy. There was only one way to go here. I let all my fury from my treatment, the horror from the weird hallucinations and the confusion of whatever had happened to me while I was unconscious well up and let it spill out in rage. "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?"
"Pay up." A head bobbed from behind the furthest desk, a grin on his face. He was Asian, with a rectangular face topped with dark-blue dyed hair done up in spikes (which wasn't weird at all, even for Leicester). To add to the direct ensemble, he had a blue leather jacket over his shoulders, framing the naked torso beneath (which, I will admit, did possess a very nice set of abs). As he straightened, I had the horrifying thought that maybe he was naked below the waist as well as above, but thankfully, he seemed to be wearing some trousers. He flashed a wide grin at the woman next to me. "I told you she'd say that."
"I swear, one day, someone's going to lead off with 'where am I?', she complained, grabbing a purse from the desk and opening it up. "Is there some ban on the classics or something that no one told us about?"
"Excuse me," I said, my fury twisting into the kind of icy rage that led you to calmly disassemble your cheating boyfriend's computer with a screwdriver before introducing his hard drive to an magnet (not that I'd ever done that. Really). I shoved myself up, the parts of my brain not swimming in hormones surprised to find that I hadn't been tied up at all. "But I'm going to leave now. You'll be hearing from the police soon." I turned and saw the door in the corner, the orange streetlight glowing through its stippled glass. I reached for the door handle.
"Wouldn't you like to know about the shadows?" Tall and lanky asked and I froze. How did he know about them. "I guarantee that you'll want to hear what I have to say, but let me demonstrate." I turned to look at him and he held one of the little shadow-imps between his hands, one above and one below as if grasping a bottle by the ends. I blinked in surprise. I hadn't expected that.
"You should listen babe," the woman said with a kind grin. "You're going to want to know this stuff. It's a jungle out there and the rules are lethal."
"Talk," I said, but I didn't even consider sitting down. If all of this was real, then I had to know what was going on, no matter how insane it seemed.
"Well firstly, my name's Rick and you're standing in my detective agency," he made an expansive gesture, encompassing the small office, before sitting down on the edge of his desk. "Both Molly and Baz work for me and, officially, we do the kind of investigations that private investigators do, you know, spying on cheating husbands and finding lost property. In reality, we're more of an unofficial investigative group. Basically, we sit on the craziness and try and make sure that the Blind, if you will, don't get caught up in it all."
"Blind?" Except for that one word, this all sounded like the script for some bad TV series. The only reason I was still here was the imp thing Rick was playing with. Something weird was going on and I needed to know what.
"He's skipping a bit of the usual explanation," 'Molly' said laconically. "You've been 'Awakened'," She made air quotes in the air. "Basically, you're seeing the emotional content of the world around you in physical form, which we call the Shadow. Actually 'sensing' might be a better word, as you're not really seeing it, but rather detecting it using all five senses. What does that scientist call it boss?"
"Emotional Synathesia," Rick said, his gaze flicking from Molly to Lea. "The processing of information from non-traditional senses by parcelling it out to the centres of the brain that handle the normal five. It's a standard part of the Awakening process, the ability to recognise the Shadow. I'm sorry, but your life has been irrevocably changed and you can't return to who you were. You've been Awakened now, sleep isn't a viable option."
"What are you talking about?" I didn't understand a word they were saying. "This makes no sense."
"Baz," Rick said casually, "If you'd be so kind?"
"Sure, no prob." The strangely-dressed asian stood up from his desk and I took a step back in surprise. He was built. Pecs and abs that would have been out of place on a Spartan flexed as he straightened. Rolling his sleeves up to reveal similarly built forearms, he grinned at me. "I do like to be flashy."
He clenched his hands and more of the shadows clung to them, wrapping round him like a . They were bright, tasting of hope and faith, reminding me of some of the bravest moments of my life. With a release of breath, Baz bent down and grabbed hold of his desk. With a grunt of effort he lifted it over his head, papers and pens cascading over him like oddly shaped rain. I took another step back in surprise, bumping into the bookcases behind me. His computer slid to one side as the desk tilted under its weight and he caught it with one hand, holding the desk with just the one shadow-wrapped hand. Which was even more impossible.
"Every Awoken has a Lexicon," Rick said calmly as his subordinate balanced his desk in one hand behind him. I somehow forced my eyes back to the leader as he spoke. "Think of it as a paradigm that helps your mind process and control the Shadow. Mine, for example, is 'Knowledge'. This Lexicon grants you the ability to control the Shadow in some way. Among other things, I can learn what these little guys have seen recently, which means that I am very good at finding out what's going on around town. I've got a few other talents but nothing major. The first order of business is figure out yours so that we can help you control it."
"This is insane!" It was all too much. I couldn't handle this any more. I spun to grab the door, but a hand lashed out and grabbed me before I could get it open.
I was standing in front of my mother's mirror, admiring my reflection. The dresses I'd tried on had been too big, but I'd found some smaller things hidden in the back of the drawers that were more my size. I'd put on one in my favourite shade of pink and then I'd gone on to investigate her make-up. I wasn't as good at as she was, but I'd gotten the basics right: blusher on the cheeks, lipstick on my lips and mascara on my eyes. For a first try, it was pretty good I thought.
I stared at my image in the mirror and I tried to burn it into my memory. I didn't get many chances like this, when both of my parents were out of the house with my sister, and I had to make the most of it. I couldn't do this while they were around. I didn't know the answers to the questions they would ask.
"We're home!" I froze in horror as I heard the front door open. I glanced wildly round the room as I heard the rustle of bags and feet. Fear set my heart to hammer in my ears as I tried to work out what to do. I couldn't let them find me like this!
I staggered aside as Molly released her grip on my wrist. What on earth had that been? I'd been some little girl trying on her mother's clothes, in her room. It must have been some sort of hallucination, but it was so real. I still shook from the adrenaline coursing through my veins, a remnant of the fear I'd felt as if it were my own. I wasn't the only one. Molly was staring at me in horror, her hand clasped to her chest protectively. I knew what had happened the second I met her eyes.
"It was you?" I asked in surprise. I'd seen her memory? That was impossible!
I was getting very tired of thinking that.
Her face dropped, going from horror to complete despair. She looked away with a flinch, her beautiful blonde hair falling over her face to hide her from the world. I almost reached out to comfort her, but I stopped myself. I didn't want whatever that had been to happen again.
Instead, I ran. I couldn't take this madness any more. I just wanted to escape all this weirdness. I wanted to go home. I slammed the door open and pounded blindly down the stairs as tears began to fill my eyes. I heard a shout from behind me, but I didn't understand what he was trying to say. All I know is that I ran out into the street and fled the insanity that was consuming my life.